Al-Shabab Sells African Ivory to Bankroll War in Somalia

Somalia's Islamist jihadists emerged as merchants in the illegal trade of elephant ivory from the Horn of Africa, according to undercover investigators. Surrounded by well-armed bodyguards for a 2008 press conference, spokesman Sheik Muktar Robow Abu Mansur vowed increased attacks against a struggling goverment force and its foreign supporters.
 

A Kenya Wildlife Service officer tests the weight of an elephant tusk at a display of more than 140 confiscated pieces of ivory outside the Port of Mombasa's police station on July 9, 2013. Shabab continues to smuggle large quantities of ivory by dhow to larger vessels anchored off Kenya's and Somalia's coasts.

Al-Shabaab fighters brandish surface-to-air missiles and other weaponry during an Octoer, 2010 miliary exercise in Mogadishu. In addition to illicit ivory sales, Shabab has been financing their war against the western-backed government with charcoal exports to the Gulf Arab states with sales that have been banned by the United Nations.

Kenya security stand guard over Tang Yong Jian, a Chinese national who pleaded guilty in the dock of the Makadara Law courts in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, January 28, 2014. Tang, 40, was arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta International airport in Nairobi trying to smuggle 3.4 kilograms of raw ivory to Giuangzhou, China. His punishment was $233,000 or seven years in prison.

Much of Shabab's ivory trades is centered in Kenya. In 2102 the World Wildlife Fund invited religious leaders of many faiths in Kenya to gathered at the site of a previous government burning of elephant tusks to pray for an end to the slaughter.